Bill Kurtz, a self-professed collector of miscellany, puts it succinctly, “I save stuff.” Lucky for us. He won’t call them “treasures from the past”, but we might. From a stash of stuff he has “dragged around from move to move” (we can all relate to that), he pulled out some musical memorabilia, starting with program covers for three school band and orchestra concerts from the 1960’s. But he didn’t stop there. He also digitized the performance recordings. Two were of the high school bands in 1965 under the direction of Victor Bordo: the Symphony Band, composed of 11th and 12th graders, and the Concert Band of 10th graders. A third recording is of a 1962 Spring concert by the Tappan orchestra conducted by Richard Massman. Our web master will be posting the .wav files on the class site and we’ll let you know when they’re available for listening.
Bill, a cornet player, was a band musician and confesses now that he really would have liked to be in the orchestra. He made a comment that will be appreciated by everyone who played under the much-loved faculty member who led the music program at Tappan during our junior high years and later the orchestra at AAHS. “I am prompted to nominate Richard Massman for sainthood after listening to the intonation in the 1962 Tappan Spring Concert.” It takes a good musician to notice and marvel over that.But if Bill wasn’t in the orchestra, he definitely had a singular role in the marching band: drum major!
The Class of ’65 boasted quite a few accomplished musicians, some of whom still have their instruments and actually play them. Thanks, Bill, for reminding all of us that making music is a grand thing to be able to do.
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